On Friday night, I was eating oatmeal in my living room when I saw someone skitter past my window. They were moving too quickly to be a jogger, but even then there was nothing athletic about the way that they did. The way that their head swiveled behind them first gave me the impression that they were being chased, so my instinct was to turn on the patio light.
I was close to the light switch and I went for it immediately but they’d made it off my property by the time I flipped it. The light barely caught them but they jerked at the sight of it, opting to run even faster. I stood at the window and watched them disappear into an old dilapidated barn a few hundred meters away.
I peeked out of the window for a while expecting someone else to creep around the corner, but they never did; I was alone as quickly as I wasn’t. Regardless, I kept my gaze fixed on the barn and considered the possibilities.
An investment firm bought the land the barn sits on about thirty years ago and hasn’t done much of anything with it. The barn itself has sat empty, rotting for as long as I can remember. It’s a complete eyesore and seems like it’d be a major safety risk to even step inside.
I live a few miles from town but I’ve got neighbors in the general area, so I figured it must’ve been one of them. My heart was still beating fast, but I was relieved that whatever business they had didn’t involve me. Maybe someone was just chasing down their cat or something.
There was no reason to call the police yet, so without taking my eyes off of the door, I backpedaled to my refrigerator and snagged two Modelos before retrieving a monocular from an adjacent cabinet. On my way back, I flipped the indoor lights off in an attempt to stay hidden and readied my monocular to the barn.
I killed my first beer pretty quickly to calm my nerves. My monocular was locked onto the busted door that I watched the trespasser run into. I was hoping to catch a good look at them on the way out, but raindrops on my window started to obstruct my view. I moved to the nearby sliding glass door with an awning and cracked my second beer. That’s when I noticed something sitting on the fringe of my yard.
It was small and it didn’t move. I remember being startled more at the fact that I hadn’t seen it sooner than I was in its presence. Looked to me like the runner had dropped something out there, so I took a decent swig and decided it best to check it out.
I put on my jacket and shoes, then stepped into the night. I took quick steps with my eyes on the barn. I hadn’t seen anything since the trespasser lept into it, but they couldn’t stay in there forever. As I closed in on the little figure, its features became more pronounced. Sitting on the edge of my property, was a lady’s purse.
Nothing was interesting about it until I picked it up. It was much heavier than I expected it to be, three or four pounds at least. I pointed my phone’s flashlight into the purse to find hundreds of glimmering antique coins.
The emblem on the coins eluded any sort of context I’m familiar with, historical or otherwise. They were very old-looking, but it was clear that someone had put serious work into restoring them. They must’ve been valuable; I figured them to be stolen given the circumstances.
I slung the purse over my shoulder and began walking back to my house. I didn’t want to contact the police department, but it seemed like the only logical next step. The last thing I needed was a bogus theft charge. If dispatch could get someone to my location quickly, they’d have a shot at capturing them. I slid the door open and almost stepped inside before I heard the quiet, strained voice of a lady crying out from far away.
“Help!”
A jolt of fear paralyzed me; I stood there rooted to the ground, unable to move. Unable to even turn around, not that I needed to. I knew where the voice was coming from. Summoning the courage to move, I dialed 911 and requested a squad car and an ambulance.
“Help me, please!”
I pivoted and took hesitant steps toward the barn.
My heart was beating out of my chest. The operator kept pressing for details, but I could barely hear him over the panicked screaming that began to erupt from the barn. I broke into a sprint towards it.
The rain was relentless at this point, completely soaking me as I closed the distance. The noise that it made hitting the ground only further suppressed the operator’s voice, and the urgency of the situation enveloped me. The only thing that I was able to make out was
“… not too far away. Try and hold tight, you can expect to see them in six, maybe seven minutes.”
I made it to the door, but I didn’t go inside. I waited around the corner and took shelter from the rain. No voice cried from inside. I took the purse off of my shoulder, readied it to swing, and turned my flashlight on again.
I crept around the corner slowly and entered the barn, which wasn’t as empty as I expected it to be. Remnants of its past life were scattered everywhere, probably by rodents or windstorms. The sound of the rain was replaced by high-pitched clicking all around me. I pointed my flashlight to the rafters and was sickened to see a massive colony of bats. I was more sickened at the state of the building. There aren’t many holes in the roof, but it’s on the verge of collapse. I didn’t want to be underneath it when it did.
Something fell over beside me; I felt sick. I pointed a flashlight in its direction. It was a toolbox with its contents spilled all over the floor.
Then I heard something behind me.
I snapped the flashlight around in time to watch a shaky old woman crawl out from behind a tractor. She wore almost nothing, and it must’ve been twenty degrees outside. The frail figure seemed lost and disoriented. She didn’t say anything.
“Why did you come all the way out here?”
She didn’t answer my question. She was still crying.
“I’ve got an ambulance on the way. Are you hurt?”
I approached her slowly to get a better look.
She slowly shook her head at me to express that she wasn’t hurt, but as I rounded the tractor she hid behind, I found that she’d suffered a laceration from her wrist to her elbow. She was actively bleeding all over the floor. I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her arm tightly.
I was having trouble bandaging her arm while holding the flashlight, so I propped it up on the purse on the floor. With this new angle, I was able to get a much better look at her. She looked terrified and seemed so frail. She looked to be in her nineties. I stared into her eyes but they trailed off somewhere behind me. She was out of it.
Booming footsteps from somewhere in the darkness shook the floor. The rickety foundation of the barn creaked with every stomp and I feared that it would come down at any second.
“Who came here with you?!”
She shook her head violently before the vibration of the stomping knocked my phone over and plunged us into darkness. Hundreds of chirping bats fluttered around me searching for a way out. I kept one hand on the woman while I searched for my phone on the ground.
In the struggle to locate it, I accidentally knocked over the purse, and heard a good chunk of the coins spill out all over the floor. Suddenly, the woman bolted from my grasp more quickly than I could react and I was left alone in the dark. In a panic, I dropped to the floor and used both hands to search for my phone.
After a few seconds, my hand brushed over it and I fumbled to aim the flashlight at the source of the footsteps, but they came to a halt. I pointed my flashlight around wildly but was unable to locate anybody other than the woman who was wildly collecting the coins off of the ground and placing them back into the purse.
“It’s not safe here! We have to go!”
I put my hand on her shoulder in an attempt to lead her, but her demeanor shifted quickly.
“GET OUT OF HERE!”
I froze.
I heard sirens approaching in the distance, so I put my hand on her again.
“GET OUT OF HERE NOW”
Her shrill voice echoed off the walls, further spooking the distressed bats.
“The ambulance is here! They’re going to…”
“GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!”
I ran back to the door and exited the barn. I saw the ambulance’s pulsating red lights approaching from behind the surrounding hills. I ran toward the road, waving my flashlight high above my head to catch their attention.
The ambulance screeched to a halt, and a few paramedics rushed out with medical equipment in hand. I led them back to the barn and watched them extract the woman, whom they found kneeling in the darkness, clutching an empty purse.